HUMBOLD'S POT GROWERS TEAM UP TO GO LEGIT

EUREKA Joey Burger was 14 when his naturalist parents moved from
Santa Cruz to settle in the coastal forest of Humboldt County.

Local hippies and homesteaders welcomed the new kid in the woods.
They schooled him in the regional art growing marijuana.

"It was never looked upon as a bad thing," Burger said.

Except before the fall harvests, when helicopters full of narcotics
officers whipped through the sky. Neighbors rushed "to call their
friends to make sure they were OK," he said.

These days, it isn't just helicopters that frighten Humboldt County's
pot culture.

America's most renowned bastion of illicit marijuana growing is
threatened by cavernous, city-taxed cultivation warehouses soon to be
licensed in Oakland. It is alarmed by cities from La Puente to
Berkeley to Sacramento that approved taxes on dispensaries or
endorsed medical marijuana cultivation, sanctioning a weed economy
wider and more competitive than ever.

So now Humboldt seeks to save itself by going legit.

In an area where marijuana growers typically evade attention, Burger
is the public voice of the new Humboldt Growers Association. Aligned
with a Sacramento lobbyist, it is working for county approval to
license and tax outdoor pot plantations of up to 40,000 square feet.

The proposal for local growers who can confirm that they have
contracts to supply weed to California medical pot shops is
attracting serious attention. But the plan riles small marijuana
farmers, pits indoor vs. outdoor growers, and stirs up fears that
Humboldt's legendary marijuana brand could lose its character to
industrialization.

Humboldt, which already permits local medical pot patients to grow up
to 100 square feet of plants, is expecting to begin work next month
on a more liberal cultivation ordinance.

"Doing nothing is not an option," said county Supervisor Bonnie
Neely, who supports the Humboldt growers' plan in concept but is
uncertain how large a scale of growing the county should allow. "This
is a major part of our economy. I just don't think we can let Oakland
or anyone else just become the leader."

Regulate or lose out?

The idea of taxing and regulating marijuana in Humboldt where pot
growing is considered a natural right isn't an easy sell.

Kim Nelson, a shaggy-haired, mustachioed carpenter who grows weed
outside his cabin above Garberville, supports local pot taxes and
oversight. But Nelson, secretary of the local Medical Marijuana
Advisory Panel, says other growers express "anger and rage over
getting a permit to grow marijuana."

Burger fears Humboldt, which long ago saw its timber and fishing
industries wither away, will lose out again if it doesn't take
proactive steps to legitimize its pot trade.

Now a 28-year-old businessman with early flecks of gray in his hair,
Burger runs a gardening supplies showroom and supervises a
well-tended outdoor orchard of marijuana that sends its product to
medical dispensaries elsewhere in the state.

He looks warily at municipalities elsewhere in California levying
taxes and capitalizing on medicinal growing.

"They are taking market share from people who spent a generation
risking their lives and their land," Burger said. "We want to see
people who paid their dues get a chance. We want to come out and
compete legally."

Max Del Real, a Sacramento lobbyist working with the Growers
Association, said its proposed ordinance could generate $10 million a
year in county tax revenues. The plan would impose annual county fees
of $20,000 on a quarter-acre outdoor pot garden and $80,000 for an acre.

Neely is skeptical of the tax revenue projections. But she considers
the plan a reasonable proposal in a county where pot is so entrenched
in the culture, economy and politics that supervisors four years ago
drafted a letter petitioning Congress to legalize marijuana.

Pot culture at crossroads

In Humboldt, population 138,000, it is more common to ask who doesn't
grow pot than who does. As open-air gardens and greenhouses bloom in
the mountains, average citizens supplement their income growing under
shimmering lights at home.

Adam Hineman, 31, toiled long hours in the restaurant business until
he began growing pot in a modest suburban house. The registered
medical marijuana patient provides his "Big Bud Train Wreck" to pot
shops in Humboldt and Santa Barbara counties. And he builds on a
Humboldt dream of someday buying property in the country and
sustaining his family with marijuana flowering in the open sun."You
couldn't make it in Humboldt without weed," he said.

Lelehnia Du Bois, 40, learned to trim neighbors' pot plants in nearby
Trinity County when she was 9.

After moving to Southern California, becoming a fashion model and a
department store buyer, she returned to the pot-growing region when
her mother, then a Humboldt resident, fell ill. In 1999, while
working as a nurse in a senior care facility, she caught a falling
patient and ruptured her spinal cord.

Now Du Bois is on disability and supplements her income in the craft
introduced to her as a little girl. Her "Sweet God" marijuana strain
"goes right to the spine" to ease her pain. She makes medicinal pot
tinctures and lip balms. She hopes to market them if new Humboldt
regulations "support the small farmer," indoors and out.

But she fears Humboldt may go too far in industrializing its trade.

"I don't want our town to be taken over," she said. "It won't be a
community anymore. It will be a factory town."

Time to go legit, DA says

Humboldt County District Attorney Paul Gallegos, the only prosecutor
in California to publicly endorse Proposition 19, the initiative
voters defeated Nov. 2 that would have made recreational pot legal,
says it is time that Humboldt legitimizes the trade "that permeates
our society."

Gallegos prosecutes more than 1,000 marijuana cases a year mostly
for grows exceeding 99 plants. Authorities also deal with robberies
and home invasions at pot sites. In August, a grower was arrested on
suspicion of shooting two laborers, killing one.

While pot sustains the economy, growers have purchased fire trucks
and paid for emergency medical training for local volunteer fire crews.

Recently, in the town of Redway, an anxious meeting took place over
how to protect the local trade.

Robert Sutherland, an environmentalist known as "Man Who Walks in the
Woods," submitted a proposal declaring that the county must "work ...
to guard the worldwide reputation of Humboldt County marijuana."

Dennis "Tony" Turner, a former school counselor who runs a dispensary
in Arcata, pitched a regional brokerage to market small growers' weed
to pot shops statewide.

Another advocate proposed a local "cannabis council" including pot
farmers, a human rights advocate and an expert "in weights and measures."

An informal poll taken at the event showed more support for licensing
smaller marijuana grows 2,000 square feet instead of 40,000.

But Del Real, the Sacramento lobbyist, ebulliently pitched the
Growers Association plan. It could sanction local growers who
cultivate for hundreds of medical marijuana users or allow scores of
small growers to share cultivation space. "The revolution is starting
here," he said.

As attendees stepped outside for contemplative marijuana tokes, one
pot spiritualist began to cry over the mere idea of taxing and
regulating Humboldt weed. "This herb is a sacrament," he protested.

Nelson, the local grower and medical marijuana advocate, called for
protection of small cultivators and the county's pot-growing
lifestyle. But he hailed the Growers Association for pitching a path
to sustainability.

"I think it's time," he said, "to stand up for who we are."